


not-so-small things

by CopperCaravan



Series: Dragon Age Prompt Fills [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Fenera Mahariel, Gen, Multi, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 19:21:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7653637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snippets from the Awakening crew about the Wardens, the Keep, and the Commander. Sort of a character-study.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Oghren

**Author's Note:**

> Written with the prompt set found here: http://majestic-hair.tumblr.com/post/135085880045/writing-prompt-set-20

A backpack with a few essentials. 

The bag hangs limp in his hand like the badge of a disgraced hunter, brought nothing home to eat. He’d thought he’d need a bigger one, thought surely he’d need clothes and supplies and _things_ when he left.

And yet all that weighs it down is a small relief of Felsi and their child, a small token to take with him, to remind him of what he’s leaving behind, of the most important people in his life and of the things he can’t seem to be: husband, father, stable and steady and sure.

He was left behind himself, once, when Branka took off after nothing. Took his house, took his dignity, took his heart. And a sodding drunk he’d been, with no reason left to be anything else. What’d he need with a Warrior’s name when he had nothing left worth fighting for?

But he remembers Denerim, remembers Mahariel pointing him out with pride he doesn’t think he’s ever earned and saying “Oghren will lead the forces on the ground. He’s the only one I trust to command in my stead.” And he remembers fighting harder than he ever had before because no one else has ever had that kind of faith in him, ever had that kind of pride. Hell, all of Orzammar thinks he’s a drunk, casteless, surfacer nothing. She’d said _trust_. She’d let him watch her back against bandits and demons and darkspawn. And hell if he was gonna let her down.

Fierce as bear, she’d been, but hardly even an adult when she’d marched into Orzammar and threatened the Dwarven Prince. She wasn’t a Commander then, though she’d been their leader. She wasn’t their hero yet, though the loyalty they grew to have for her was unshakable. And she wasn’t a master of strategy then, and he knows that hasn’t changed. She’d needed him. And he’d needed—more than he’d known—to be there, to be the man he was before, the man she somehow knew he could be when all he knew was that he needed another drink.

Felsi is his wife now, the woman he loves, and she doesn’t deserve to be where he was when Branka left him for the Deep Roads. And his child, too—his _nugget_ —deserves better than some drunken bastard what can’t be a father when he’s home and can’t stay home for being restless and worried about some not-really-a-kid who ain’t even his own. But the Warden—she’s his girl, and he knows she needs him now, just like she did in Denerim.

And he’s going to be there. There’s nothing left to pack.


	2. Sigrun

Geraniums sprouting from an old tyre.

The Commander had told her the sweetest story yesterday. A friend during the Blight who’d picked a flower, found it growing in the deadbush and thought to save it from the coming darkness.

“Alistair’s such a sweet little sap,” she’d laughed, her chin in her hand and a smile lighting up her face. Rare thing, Sigrun’s noticed—seeing the Commander with a genuine smile. Must have lost a lot in her time, short as it seems to have been with the Wardens.

She wonders if Mahariel knows, wonders if she looks in the mirror and sees what Sigrun sees: a woman who offers second chances.

“You’re not allowed to have possessions in the Legion of the Dead.”

“Well, you’re allowed to in the Wardens.”

Nothing fancy, nothing so flowery and romantic as plucking a rose from a garden in the midst of a Blight. But so kind. And so warm. And so true.

Almost funny how the Commander tries so hard not to let on that she is all those things herself. She gets on with them—makes jokes and laughs and drinks and smiles. But then she’ll catch herself, or maybe she’s only remembering, the way Sigrun remembers her squad, the screams echoing off the walls of the Deep Roads, the last breaths of the dead. Maybe that’s what it is: fearful of living.

But she’d told Sigrun to live. Told her to read books and sing songs and tell stories. Told her to buy baubles and wear jewellery and eat a second helping. “You’re allowed to in the Wardens.”

Oghren says this keep came from Nathaniel’s family, or at least in a manner of speaking. And she’s not quite sure about surface nobles because, quite honestly, this place is a bit of a mess. In Orzammar things are different—nobles kept tidy house, the better to see all their things. But there’s trash all over this place—worn down buildings, crumbling walls, broken down wagons and shattered windows and torn curtains. It’s a mess. And Mahariel spends so much of her free time these days cleaning up. Twice they’ve gone to Amaranthine without her, to the market or the baker for sweets; she opts to stay behind and there’s something else fixed every week. Some piece of junk that the Commander’s given a second chance.

Today it’s a wagon wheel that Sigrun finds—long past salvageable. But Mahariel’s found a new use for it, stuck it in the garden near the groundskeepers’ quarters and filled the spokes with flowers.

A broken wagon wheel, meant to carry the weight of people and possessions and a long distance travelled. Without its three brothers and so broken up, most would find it worthless.

But not the Commander. And, now, not Sigrun either.


	3. Velanna

An abandoned greenhouse.

“Why don’t you explore the grounds?”

It’s not the shems, not really. Mahariel seems to have trained them well (or perhaps she simply found good people), for she’s not heard a servant or a soldier or a steward say “knife ear” the whole time she’s been here. They’ve been... accommodating. Kind, even.

But no number of well-meaning shems or dandelion bitters or elvish curses from the mouth of their leader can make her feel at home in a place that is not.

Of course, it’s not the place either, not really. Never is for the Dalish—with all their wandering, it’s never _a_ place or _the_ place, never _here_ or _there_. It’s about their people, about kin and clan and custom. Even with Mahariel at her side, there is far too much room in her heart left from all the things she’s lost and wandering the dark, stone halls of the Keep only makes her feel all the more foreign here.

Perhaps her wilting is far more obvious that she’d thought, or perhaps Mahariel knows this grief all too well, or perhaps it is simply something between them, an invisible thread that pulls one toward the other in culture and care and blood. Whatever it is, Mahariel had known, had seen her paling color, her thinning cheeks, her heavy eyes, and said “Why don’t you explore the grounds?”

It does help: to be out in the fields, in the wind and the tall grass. She can’t pretend, not even when her eyes are closed, that she is in the wood where she spent so much of her life (everything here smells like mud and dogs and metal). But the yellows and greens and browns of the world—they are something at least.

Through the gradually piling snow and the smoke of the forge and the walls of stone penning her in, though, something catches her eye. A structure, or rather, the skeleton of one, overgrown with splintered briars and frost-dead vines, is jutting from the untended field like the sleeping trees of winter. Time has practically devoured the thing, but on inspection, it seems quite hardy, despite the neglect. Many of the glass panels have been shattered, scattered about the soil like seeds.

She could grow glass trees here. She could pull up these winter-resting shem’len roses, left to steal the care of the earth for their pretty blooms and lure lovers to pricks and pains, and she could till the earth for their food, grow felandaris and blueberries and spindleweed. She could sink her hands into the glass-strewn soil and be a proper First to this improper “clan” that Mahariel has brought her into. It will not be home—never that—but it can be sustenance, newly grown.


	4. Justice

The first snow.

There is much in this world to be wary of. He had learned that quickly. These people, for one thing—there exists within them so much of _everything,_ it is a wonder they do not burst for their fullness. The Commander, for example, Justice had taken a particular interest in. At first he found her to be just, honourable, righteous. She had assisted him in his cause after all, and he thought, surely, this one is of Justice as well.

But in that very same week, he saw rage, uncertainty, selfishness. Kindness, pride, gentleness. Before he left the fade, he could not imagine that so much could exist within a single entity. But it is not only her; they are, all of them, like this!

Himself as well, now he’s taken on all of Kristoff’s memories, echoes of his thoughts and feelings. It is strange: to feel something he does not quite feel but also to feel anything other than what he has felt before. And these things, they do not only belong to Kristoff. He feels the sore ache in his muscles, compassion and pity for all the Blight seems to have taken from these people. He has known _rage_ ; it was terrifying. And he has known affection; it was...

This world—everything is separate but it seems nothing at all exists independent of anything else. He’s more than he was but also less. It gives him a headache (which is also new and unpleasant).

There are, however, many praiseworthy aspects of this realm. It is beautiful, in its way. Everything is so much more... saturated than the Fade. Before, he’d never have used the words they use here: hazy and vague and shadowy. But with a new world to compare it to, he finds use in those words. And in sharp, bright, cold, piercing. Like a blade, like the lyrium, like the snow.

She’d asked him, the Commander, if he was _homesick._

For the Fade or for his place in it or for his form or for his role—she didn’t specify. It didn’t matter. He is. He isn’t. It is hard to be sure. And he’d told her so. “It is difficult to find my place here,” he’d said. To find _any_ place here with room for him (he is so much more now; nearly two people where he wasn’t even one before and of all the words he’s found a use for, it seems that some things don’t have words at all).

“You’ve a place here,” she’d said. “As long as you want it.”

He is not quite sure he will even _last_ that long; he can see himself leaving her side no sooner, certainly, but this body that is and isn’t his—Kristoff—no amount of magic will keep death at bay, it seems.

He was—is—was—Justice. Never Cowardice, nor Fear, nor Uncertainty. But now, there are no answers for him.

_What will happen to me, Commander?_

For now, for today, he will join her, with Sigrun, in the library. He will learn new words to describe the snow, the cold, the beauty. These things should be embraced, while he is still here...


	5. Varel

An acorn-patterned sweater.

“I can’t run a godsdamned arling,” she’d said that first night in the Keep. Months ago, now.

He’d been quite hesitant to agree but the truth is, she was right. She’s simply not been educated to deal with politics and property disputes and uprisings, all on the back of a damned horde of talking darkspawn killing her people.

 _Her_ people. That’s the thing, isn’t it? These people—these blasted, selfish nobles who’ve never wanted for a damned thing in their lives—they aren’t her bloody people, are they? No, her people are... well, he doesn’t know where and that’s precisely the point isn’t it? He doesn’t know where they are, her people, _because_ of these people who _aren’t_ her people. And yet she’s spent these months slaving away for them, bleeding for them, healing up while she does paperwork, feeding and entertaining and protecting them as best she can and what’s she gotten for her trouble? Two poisoned cups and an actual coup.

Her grasp of common is impressive, but still basic. She lacks any elegance whatsoever, and Maker’s Breath, her tact is all but non-existent. She has (like him) _very_ little patience and (also like him) absolutely no appreciation for Court culture or manner. Of course she can’t run an arling. He’d wondered all along what in the bloody hell the Queen was thinking, putting a Warden, a Dalish elf, in charge of a bunch of farmers and nobles and tradesmen. It’s beside the point that she’d deserved every bit of praise and reward they could give her.

Maker’s sake, she plays jokes on her Guard Captain! Watching that man stumble back into a tub of bath water was the best thing he’s seen in years and the entirety of the situation makes him so damned angry! She’s so young. She _should_ be playing jokes and sneaking from the pantry and... whatever Dalish do, he doesn’t know. But she shouldn’t be here, having to try so hard and look so carefully for a moment or two of happiness.

She reminds him every bit of the child he'd never had. It’s impossible not to be angry. And Maker, but this is the ugliest shirt he’s ever seen.

“It’s getting cold,” the Commander says, her smile spread wide across her face. “Nathaniel said it was a she—a human tradition, giving woolen clothes to those you care for. One of your holidays, I think.”

It’s grey and there are embroidered acorns and squirrels running in pattern across the breast. Clearly time and resources went into it, but...

He hesitates too long.

“Is... is this wrong? Did I do it wrong?”

 _Did I do it wrong?_ Maker save him. This woman is too young to carry the burdens she’s been given and he can do so little to lessen the load—stamp paperwork for her, clear out complaints, convince Woolsey to loosen the purse strings for a few extra treats in the kitchen. Too kind to be as hardened as she is when she’s on the field, when she’s face to face with people who swear fealty in public and try to poison her in her own kitchens.

 _You got me clothes,_ he wants to say. _Because you care for me. Because you want me to stay warm._ It’s so strange to him—his arl, a Dalish, a Warden Commander, a woman young enough to be his daughter—giving him a woolen shirt. With squirrels on it.

“No,” he says, shaking his head firmly and folding it carefully over his arm. “No, you didn’t. This is lovely. And I thank you very kindly for it.”

Her smile returns, a little hesitant this time, and he resolves to wear it; if his Arlessa wears ( _damn; what’s the word..._ ) _vallaslin_ , her Seneschal will wear a beautiful, ugly sweater. Their people will simply have to cope.

Or perhaps they will be so offended, they will stop visiting.


	6. Mahariel

I will plant myself and grow here, for a year or more.

She has claimed pieces of this place.

A corner of the wall—the stone rough and jutting out oddly into the garden. She likes to climb atop that corner and watch. She waves at her men ( _her_ men, what a thought) and cheers on her masons and smiths and Dworkin, though everyone surely wishes she wouldn’t. She clambers back down to help her groundskeepers, to plant flowers or learn to fix things or just to chat with them. They’ve all such unexpected stories to tell (she’s learned so many embarrassing things about Nathaniel—endearing, really).

A small patch of sun behind one of the barns, where she can sound out words and practice speaking without being watched. Practicing alone doesn’t help her pronunciation much but it saves her a bit of dignity.

A closet in the hall. It smells horrible—it’s where her Wardens keep their boots ( _her_ Wardens, another thought too strange for comfort, yet comfortable nonetheless). There’s something familiar about it, however, so sometimes she hides there for a moment of quiet, or for a quick drink when she needs to mope for a bit. She’s accidentally overheard some interesting things there and if she had any morals, she’d have stopped using it but she hasn’t.

The stables, where she sings to the horses and dogs, another thing better done in private, another unexpected comfort.

Even her bed, which is the strangest of all. She has never had a bedroom, didn’t particularly like the one Eamon gave her that night in Redcliffe, slept instead in a heap with a few of the others who meant to ease her worry (but she knew they were worried too).

It is her bedroom (such a strange phrase) that makes her feel the guiltiest. Her clan, wherever they are, do not have stone walls to keep them safe, or hearths to keep them warm, or beds to keep them rested. Even her city cousins do not live and sleep in the comfort she has gained, whether she wanted it or not.

They wandered, always. _Places_ have never meant home, only _people._ Her people.

And then she left them. Lost them. Betrayed them by forgetting herself, making a home with the others—Sten and Zevran and Morrigan and the rest. They wandered too, so it was almost familiar. It _became_ familiar; they all did. They were her people too and that is a sin unforgivable.

And then she left them. Or rather, they left her. Not a betrayal at all, but because they had homes to go back to, or duties to do, or freedoms to find.

This place... Her people—her first people, the people of her blood—they’ve never had land and she has more than she knows what to do with now. Most days it makes her angry but some days, she sits at the table with her Wardens, laughs with them, drinks with them, feels at home all over again. Pretends she isn’t wrong to do it.

She knows. Oh, she knows. This place is home now and it won’t be forever. She is Dalish; a wanderer no matter how far or how long she is kept from her people. These small places she’s claimed of the land and the Keep—she can feel it: they will not be hers much longer.

She doesn’t grieve, not quite. But she wonders what will become of her. Tamlen came back, for only a moment ( _dead eyes, mottled skin, his sweet smile all gone and traded away for—_ ). And Oghren came back, to fight beside her. She wonders if she will be alone when this too is taken from her.

But for now, she climbs her corner and watches her guards do their rotations, watches one of the groundskeepers draw from the well, watches Nathaniel set up an archery target to practice, and she remembers all the homes she had while she still had them, files away the memories of this place that will serve the same once she is gone.

She thinks _This place will be my home_ and it is a lie.

She thinks _These Wardens are my home_ and it is not.


	7. Nathaniel

Drawing outlines of houses in a little brown book.

The sketchbook was his sister’s, long ago, in the rare, quiet moments when they could truly be children. He’d found it under the bed in the room that now belongs to Velanna.

Delilah used to draw all sorts of things, particularly things that didn’t exist ( _yet_ , she would say): horses she would have when she was a proper rider, a knightly husband when she was a proper woman, and a smiling, stick figure family, when their parents were proper parents.

All things that didn’t exist at the time and never did turn out quite the way she thought.

She’s already left for the Free Marches, but he doubts she’d care to have the thing back anyway. Oddly enough, he’s always been the more sentimental one—about things like this at least. Give her a gift on holiday and Delilah will keep it forever, but Nathaniel’s always cared more for the everyday things: her first baby hat and Thomas’ toy soldiers, things like that. But now he finds himself drawing on the clean pages, filling in every blank space he can find. He’s awful at it, sure, but it’s not really about that.

He draws dogs and bows and arrows. He feels like a little boy again, hiding in the back rooms with Delilah and Thomas, guilty of enjoying the quiet. He draws things he—like Delilah—thought would someday be part of his life, but there is no noble wife, no batch of children. Just the little wishes of a little boy.

He draws faces, with round ears and with a pointed one, with that tiny bit of beard Mahariel likes to tease him about and the elegant lines tattooed across her face. It’s startling, how well he knows those lines, how easily he can recreate them now, with so little thought and so much fondness.

He draws the Keep even, a place he’d never felt at home in even when it was rightfully his. His rooms are boxes and the roofs, fat triangles. He doesn’t even try to recreate the designs etched into the windows. Maker, it is a good thing that he never dreamt of building homes.

Perhaps Wardening really is what he wanted all along—or maybe not. Maybe it’s just a means to an end; maybe it allows him what he wants. There is very little point, these days, in pretending he wants anything else, but perhaps equally little point in being honest about it.

He hears his name echoing down the hall, not hardly so harsh as it’d been the first time he heard her say it. Mahariel. She sounds almost sing-song now, which means she’s nicked something from the pantry. Or she wants to drink with him. Either’s good, honestly. Either’s great.

He snaps his little book closed and tucks it into a pocket, then he heads down the hall to her room, where he knows she’s waiting.

Not at all what he imagined when he was young, nor what he’d imagined when he first returned here, to this place that has only now become a home. Not what he’d planned on at all. So much better.


	8. Anders

I don’t want to leave. I must. 

It’s a deal then.

Feels wrong to say but... but they know each other; it’s different. _They_ are different.

Anders and Justice, they aren’t like the others, aren’t like all those mages who only made deals with demons for power, aren’t like all those demons who made deals with mages for a ride in a body.

Maybe a little, but it’s different: the power to _help,_ to give them _freedom,_ to give them _life._ And who can blame Justice for his fear? For seeing the end of him coming swift as Kristoff’s body began to... He’d _needed_ this. They’d both _needed_ it.

Oh, and they’ll be in trouble now, to put it lightly. All these templars, these Wardens—not even really Wardens, just more blasted Templars, more Chantry dogs—dead on the ground and they’ve blasted the trees like... How’d they do it?

Don’t remember. Doesn’t matter. What matters is they’ve got to go now. Hadn’t expected the Templars, hadn’t expected to have to...

_Should have told her._ No. Of course not! She’d have... No she wouldn’t have. Don’t be ridiculous.

Mahariel with her arms in front of him, shielding him from the Templars in Amaranthine, over a foot shorter than he is. Could still stare Rylock down from over the top of Mahariel’s hair, smirk while the Commander told them off, threatened to kill them in increasingly crude ways. Did kill them, wouldn’t let them take me— _us_ —wouldn’t let them take me if it killed her. “You’re free now.” “No more running from me.” _Running now._ It’s not the same. Yes it is.

Was bloody weird, is what it was and he’s never been more grateful to anyone in his life. _Should’ve told her, should’ve told her; she’d have helped._ No. Absolutely not. She’d have helped us, maybe not this—probably not this— _no, not this_ —but she’d have helped and then where’d we be? Where’d these Templar bastards be? Dead. _Dead._ That’s right, dead. Dead as they are now and then where’d she be? _Here._ Dead. Maybe. _No._ You don’t know what you’re talking about. No, I don’t. But we couldn’t have.

_I don’t want to go._ Orlesians running around in the Keep, probably looking for their pals already. You know how he feels about us— _both of us_ —me. You think Mahariel could keep the Chantry off us now? Could keep the damned Queen from turning us over? _The Circles. Not the Circles again—_ stuffed in that room all alone for a year, hard to tell at the time, shuffling out too weak to walk proper, hugs from the other apprentices, _we thought you’d died, they said, we thought they’d killed you_ —or just the block, head on the wood, sword on the neck if even that, Mahariel couldn’t save us— _me_ —couldn’t save us from that. _Tranquillity._ Don’t even know how that’d work now but I’m not— _we’re not_ —I’m not risking it, never that, anything but that. How could she save us— _me_ —how could she save us from the brand?

Fell out of the fade with me— _with us, I was there too_ —with me, gave me a place, and a ring, and a book. Gave me a goodbye, gave me... _I don’t want to go._ I don’t want to go. _I don’t want to go!_

Should have written a letter, should have said goodbye. I don’t want to go. _Goodbye._


End file.
